We’ll use cornstarch as a thickener to make the sauce silky and smooth. Chicken stock is what makes up the bulk of the sauce.

Ginger and garlic add a punch of aromatics. There’s just a bit of ground pork in this dish, just enough to compliment the tofu. The tofu should be smooth, creamy, and soft. The spice will be much more fresh and apparent if you do. In regards to Sichuan peppercorns, you can buy pre-ground Sichuan peppercorn powder, but if they’re available, go for whole Sichuan peppercorns and toast and grind them yourself. But, like champagne, if you can only find sparkling wine, don’t sweat it, Lee Kum Kee also sells a serviceable easier to find Cantonese style doubanjiang that they call chili bean sauce/toban djan. It’s kind of like how, if you can, you want to buy champagne from the Champagne region in France. When shopping, you want to look for the Pixian (an area in China) variety if you can. It’s been called the soul of Sichuan cooking and it’s what will give your mapo tofu that glorious red hue. You’ll be searching the aisles wondering, is this worth it? I’m here to tell you that it is! Doubanjiang is a spicy fermented mix of soy and broad beans. Sometimes, with authentic recipes, there’s that one ingredient that you have to search far and wide for. The other ingredients are pretty standard fare. You can find both of them at your local Asian grocery store. There are two key ingredients to this tofu: chili bean paste (doubanjiang) and Sichuan peppercorns. Mapo tofu is soul food and maybe the best comfort food out there, especially when paired with perfectly fluffy rice. Also key is the texture play mapo tofu has going on: the silky creaminess from the soft tofu coats your tongue and the crispy-ish bits of pork add a pleasing contrast to the overall softness and sauciness of the dish. It also has a deeply savoriness to it thanks to the umami from the doubanjiang. The sauce is pleasingly oily, which ampliflies the spiciness and flavor. Mapo tofu tastes spicy: both conventionally spicy with heat on your tongue, and málà, a numbing kind of spicy that is characteristic of Sichuan food. There are lots of mapo tofus out there but this is a traditional, authentic mapo tofu recipe. The name of the dish roughly translates to “pockmarked grandma’s tofu,” kind of like old grandma’s tofu. It has soft tofu in a spicy bright red sauce with a bit of ground pork. If you’re not familiar with it, here’s a quick breakdown: mapo tofu is a super popular Chinese dish from the Sichuan province. And, if you’re not so big on spicy, the good thing about this dish is that you can adjust the spiciness level by altering how big of a pinch of Sichuan pepper you finish it with. If you love tofu and you love spicy, you’re going to love mapo tofu too. Instead, you’ll finish your dish off with a generous sprinkling, which is perfect for adjusting spice levels right at the table. In this recipe, we’re not going to cook the peppercorns because they have a tendency to get over toasted if you’re not careful and can lead to bitterness. If you have high quality or fresh peppercorns, the more numbing and powerful. Warning: Sichuan peppercorns are very spicy. Spicy hot fiends love Sichuan peppercorns because they’re fragrant and have a specific flavor. Málà literally means numbing (ma 麻) hot/spicy (la 辣). It’s called “málà” in Chinese and is prized in Sichuan cooking. The pleasant numbing spice of mapo tofu comes from Sichuan peppercorns, which have a pleasant numbing effect which makes it so you can eat more and more spice until you realize that you’re entirely spiced out. If you haven’t had Sichuan food before, you might be scared of it’s fire-y red color, but once you get past that fear of heat, you’ll be coming back for more, more, more. Mapo tofu is a famous Sichuan tofu dish that has plenty of mala, the signature numbing spiciness of good Sichuan food. If you’re in the know, you know what I’m talking about: mapo tofu. I’m addicted to the magical combination of silky soft tofu and saucy spicy pork.

Mapo tofu recipe